After offering background information, Pat Wilson provides ideas for accessing the GCSE Pilot concepts and core themes through your current GCSE Geography specifications.
Pilot GCSE - Links to Existing GCSEs
Introduction
From September 2004 some 48 centres will be developing the Pilot GCSE specification (to remain a pilot until 2007, and all existing GCSE specifications remain current until 2007). The consequences of the Tomlinson review will inform candidates’ geographical experiences from 2007 onwards.
This section aims to help the Centres that have expressed an interest in accessing aspects of the Pilot GCSE Geography. Inevitably, the style of the existing specifications - eight English and one Welsh - lend themselves to accessing this thinking more easily than others.
What follows are suggestions as to how the five guiding concepts underpinning the three core themes might be taught through the content of current GCSE Geography specifications. These themes are ‘My Place - Living in the UK today’, ‘An Extreme Environment – Exploring landscape and process’, and ‘People as Consumers – The impact of our decisions’.
You may wish to focus on some ideas at a departmental meeting, and an audit of your current teaching and learning programme could form part of a development day. Alternatively, you may wish to meet with other local schools interested in refreshing their post-14 programmes.
To gain a full award candidates need to undertake investigations relating to the three core themes and select two from seven optional units currently available in the Pilot GCSE (Coastal management, Geographical information systems, Geography in the news, Travel and tourism destinations, Planning where we live, Urban transport – finding sustainable solutions, and Investigating geography through fieldwork). More are planned, including teacher-devised options. Further advice and support concerning the optional units will become available.
You are advised to look at both the Pilot GCSE specification and the Teachers’ Resource Guide (accessible via the navigation bar on the left) before considering the following information. Especially pages 3-5 and 13-17 in the Teachers’ Resource Guide. These include an array of important resources to assist in planning the teaching and learning strategies. While, in the Pilot GCSE specification, pages 25-34 show how the five concepts (have been drawn together in the three core themes.
Should you implement such changes to your current teaching programme, strategies developed from this work will supersede current teaching material derived from your present GCSE specification.
Pat Wilson
Links to existing specifications
Ways of incorporating the Pilot ideas into your specification are described in relation to the following specifications:
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